It may not be here anytime soon, but Neil deGrasse Tyson would certainly seem to imply that we are on our way to a much longer lifespan in the future. The age-old dream of wanting to live together may not be a dream in the future, as science may allow us to tweak our genes in such a way as to stop them from degenerating.
Speaking on Vlad TV the famed astrophysicist was asked, “Do you think there will be a point in the future where humans will be able to cheat death through the way of removing the brain and putting it into a different body or putting it into a robot body?” He was quick to dismiss this as being “unnecessary,” citing another much more likely scientific route for longer life.
“We’ll just mess with the genome and live forever. Just change the genes in a way that they don’t age. We are much closer to that than separating our brain and putting it in a jar.”
The host commented that this is something we are already doing with mice (there have been various studies conducted on the matter of life expansion in rodents for some decades now). In a recent study, a biotech startup has been working on a reprogramming study to de-age mice according to MIT Technology Review, and has increased the lifespan of these mice by double leading to vast investments from those seeking to be a part of creating the elixir of life. Tyson adds,
“There are ways we can prolong the life of other animals, but they don’t live forever. They just live longer than they otherwise would have. I think we are much closer to that manipulation of the genome than removing your brain from your skull and sticking it in a jar.”
He then went on to discuss how we can combat two of the scariest degenerative diseases we have in our world today, Alzheimers and ALS could be tackled by a brain-body transplant.
“I fantasize we have two diseases, two very terrible diseases, we have Alzheimer’s and we have ALS, one destroys the brain but the body is intact. One destroys the body but the brain is intact, so I imagine a future where you can do a brain-body transplant, at least get one whole body out of that.”
There are a number of ethical issues surrounding this last idea, and it is not something we are close to at any point in the near future at least. As Tyson says, it is a fantasy of his. But perhaps we are not far off from living forever, the real question is, do we want to?